Effects Of Self-Instruction-Based Schema Strategy On Compare Word Problem Solving Of Students With Intellectual Disabilities

As the core of mathematical competence,word problem solving is an ability of the problem solver to apply existing mathematical knowledge and integrate multiple cognitive and metacognitive processes to answer real-life problems.Word problems are based on real-life events and originate from life.Compare word problems are very common in real-life situations,such as comparing the number of items that belong to them;comparing the price and size of items,etc.Successful answers to compare word problems are therefore of great importance to students with intellectual disabilities in terms of adapting to life and recreation.Due to deficits in attention and working memory,as well as a lack of explanatory language and executive function development,students with intellectual disabilities have difficulties in solving compare word problems,mainly due to incomplete reading,reliance on key words,distractibility and lack of knowledge of diagrams.At present,there are relatively few studies on students with intellectual disabilities’ ability to solve compare word problems.Studies have shown that visualization of diagramming strategies can help students with intellectual disabilities to represent the problem correctly and help them to understand the meaning of the problem more intuitively.At the same time,the use of self-instruction strategies in compare word problem solving for students with intellectual disabilities can help students to form compare word problem solving steps and develop good checking habits,which can effectively improve their compare word problem solving skills.Therefore,this study adopts a self-instruction-based schema strategy to improve the compare word problem solving skills of students with intellectual disabilities.This study provides a reference for future research on improving the problem solving skills of students with intellectual disabilities.This study adopts a single-case multiple-probe across participants design to conduct an intervention experiment using a self-instruction-based schema strategy for compare word problems with three students with intellectual disabilities.The independent variable in this study was the self-instruction-based schema strategy and the dependent variable was the ability to solve compare word problems.The study also examined the three students with intellectual disabilities’ mastery of the self-instruction-based schema strategy.The experiment was divided into a baseline period,an intervention period and a generalization period,in which the intervention period was divided into three phases according to the different question types of the compare word problems,namely the reference-quantity unknown intervention phase,the compared-quantity unknown intervention phase and the difference-quantity unknown intervention phase.At the end of the intervention period,compare word problems in everyday situations were used to test the generalization effect of the self-instruction-based schema strategy on the three students with intellectual disabilities’ ability to solve compare word problems.At the end of the experiment,the study used both visual analysis and calculation of Tau-U effect values to analyse the experimental data of the three students with intellectual disabilities,the study obtained the following results:First,the self-instruction-based schema strategy significantly improved the compare word problem solving skills of the students with intellectual disabilities,and the intervention had an immediate and generalization effect.Second,all three students with intellectual disability were able to master the self-instruction-based schema strategy and apply it to compare word problems in everyday contexts.Based on the above findings,the following recommendations are made for the study of compare word problem solving skills for students with intellectual disabilities:providing visual support to attract students’ attention through visual stimulation and increase their motivation to participate in the classroom.Focusing on developing students’ reading comprehension skills by providing mathematics-related electronic picture books and selecting life-like application problems for teaching,so as to improve students’ reading comprehension skills by mobilizing their interest in learning.And to experience mathematical thinking in real-life situations to lay the foundation for students to be able to solve practical problems in daily life independently.